Today, Monday May 13th, New Yorkers from Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, and over twenty partner groups will march and rally to greet President Obama when he attends a fundraiser with members of the 1% at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue.

Carbon dioxide levels have now surpassed 400 parts per million, a long-feared milestone. We must act now.

Join us if you stand against fossil fuel pipelines, against fracking, against tar sands, and FOR a country powered by wind, water and solar.

Gather in Bryant Park starting at 5 (meet near the fountain off 6th avenue at 41st Street). Reverend Billy and his choir will lead us off with a rousing blessing and song. We'll begin to march at 5:30, then rally in front of the Waldorf Astoria at 6:30. Please wear yellow and orange to demonstrate your support for a clean energy future.

RSVP and Share on Facebook!

Event Partners: 350 NYC, 350 NJ, 350.org, 99Rise, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline (CARP), CREDO, CUNY Divest, Food & Water Watch, Global Kids Inc., Green Party of NY, Human Impacts Institute, NYC Friends of Clearwater, NYU Divest, Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, Restore the Rock, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club National, United for Action, World Can't Wait, WESPAC, YANA (You Are Never Alone).

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

The terrace at St. Regis Deer Valley, the “Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts.”

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica, April 30, 2013

In January, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, ascended to the powerful chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Six weeks later, campaign finance filings and interviews show, Hensarling was joined by representatives of the banking industry for a ski vacation fundraiser at a posh Park City, Utah, resort.

The congressman's political action committee held the fundraiser at the St. Regis Deer Valley, the "Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts" known for its "white-glove service" and for its restaurant by superstar chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

There's no evidence the fundraiser broke any campaign finance rules. But a ski getaway with Hensarling, whose committee oversees both Wall Street and its regulators, is an invaluable opportunity for industry lobbyists.

Among those attending the weekend getaway was an official from the American Securitization Forum, a Wall Street industry group, a spokesman confirmed. It gave $2,500 in February to Hensarling's political action committee, the Jobs, Economy, and Budget (JEB) Fund.

Len Wolfson, a lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, which gave the JEB Fund $5,000 that month, posted a picture on Instagram from the weekend of the fundraiser of the funicular at the St. Regis. (It was labeled, "Putting the #fun in #funicular. #stregis #deervalley #utah.") Wolfson did not respond to requests for comment. (UPDATE 1 p.m. Wolfson has now set his account to private.) 

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#RollingJubilee begins November 15th with the #PeoplesBailout

Buy tickets here: http://www.lepoissonrouge.com/lpr_events/peoples-bailout/
100% of ticket sales go to abolishing debt

Greetings from Strike Debt!

It’s finally time to tell you about our exciting new project, “The Rolling Jubilee” (www.rollingjubilee.org). The basic premise is simple: people shouldn’t have to go into debt for an education, because they need medical care, or because they have to put food on the table during hard times.

No politician is going to fix this.

The Rolling Jubilee is a bailout of the people by the people - we buy defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. Our goal for the launch is to raise $50,000, which will likely allow us to abolish more than $1,000,000 dollars worth of personal debt. The more money we raise, the more debt we can abolish. Donations can be made online at rollingjubilee.org beginning around November 15.

More details will be released as we get closer to the launch.

THE PEOPLE’S BAILOUT – TICKETS ON SALE Now!

This campaign will launch on November 15th with THE PEOPLE'S BAILOUT, a telethon and variety show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. There will be music, comedy, education, magic and more. Confirmed guests include: comedian Janeane Garofalo, Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead, actor/director John Cameron Mitchell ('Hedwig and the Angry Inch'), comedian Hari Kondabolu, David Rees ('Get Your War On'), Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, and more. (Download Poster at https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/46531_297288527050595_1862553266_n.jpg)

Tickets for the show are already on sale. Purchase yours at http://www.lepoissonrouge.com/lpr_events/peoples-bailout/. Be quick, we expect them go fast!

HOW YOU CAN HELP

We're hoping you can help us spread the message via social media. Let’s get the word out far and wide. Here’s how:

RIGHT NOW

1) Forward this message to friends and family.

2) Please like our Facebook page & share the Facebook Event Page.

3) Follow @StrikeDebt on twitter.

4) Post and tweet using the hashtags #PeoplesBailout and #RollingJubilee, and refer to our website (www.rollingjubilee.org) and twitter handle. Some sample posts can be found here: http://bit.ly/RJSampleTweets.

5) Donate your Twitter or Facebook account for one daily re-post or re-tweet: http://donateyouraccount.com/StrikeDebt. This is a safe and easy way to help us keep spreading the message.

HELP US PROMOTE ON NOVEMBER 15TH

On November 8th and 15th, we’re organizing big coordinated pushes to promote #PeoplesBailout on social media. Soon we will be sending out additional info about how to help. Watch your inbox and invite your friends to sign up at rollingjubilee.org.

Please email us (rollingjubilee@gmail.com or strikedebt@interoccupy.net) if you have any questions about the Rolling Jubilee. We’ll be in touch soon with details about the big social media push.

In Solidarity,

Strike Debt

PS - To head off one common question, we cannot buy specific individual's debt - instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. As a trial run, we spent $466 and successfully bought and abolished $14,000 of medical debt.

You are not a loan.

[Via]

One week after the release of secretly taped videos of Mitt Romney from a private fundraiser sent his poll numbers into a tailspin, the Obama campaign is using the controversial comments in a new television commercial that began running Monday.

In the 30 second ad, the narrator gets straight to the point, saying “Mitt Romney attacked 47% of Americans who pay no income tax, including veterans, the elderly and disabled."

The narrator refers to the secret video clips released last Monday in Mother Jones of Romney at a private fundraiser in Florida in May. The material, recorded without the candidate’s knowledge, showed the Republican challenger telling the audience that 47% of voters are dependent on the government, see themselves as victims, and would “vote for the president no matter what.”

One of the clips is incorporated in the new spot. “My job is not to worry about those people,” Romney says while standing at the podium.

The narrator then asks viewers “Doesn’t the President have to worry about everyone?”

“Mitt Romney paid just 14.1 percent in taxes last year,” says the narrator, claiming that “he keeps millions in Bermuda and the Cayman islands.”

The spot ends with the narrator saying "Maybe instead of attacking others on taxes, Romney should come clean on his."

Just don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen!

Saturday night, during a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton Hotel about 1,500 people paid up to $50,000 to see the Republican nominee for president speak. Guests were also entertained by comedian Dennis Miller, but it seems that the Romney campaign could've easily skipped that expense.

Via:

Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

Didn't they have science class in that fancy private school?

President Barack Obama sat down to chat with David Letterman on Tuesday, and while they discussed more than just politics, it seemed that his response to the leaked Romney fundraiser video was on everyone's mind. The video had over 2 million views on Monday alone.

Taking Mitt Romney to task, Obama said that "There are not a lot of people out there who think they are victims," and that voters want to make sure that their president is "not writing off big chunks of the country."

The secretly taped video showed the Republican presidential nominee describing "47 percent of the people" as Obama supporters who depend on government and believe they are victims. Romney said it is not his job "to worry about those people," referring to what he called Obama's locked-in supporters who believe they are "entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

"My expectation is that if you want to be president, you have to work for everyone, not just for some," Obama said during Letterman's "Late Show."

Romney has since said he made his point "inelegantly" in trying to describe differing visions for the nation.

Obama said people understand that the presidential candidates will make mistakes on the campaign trail. He said that includes one he regrets from 2008, when audio from one of his own private fundraisers had him saying that some residents of depressed rural areas get bitter and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Having said that, Obama added, "One thing I've learned as president is that you represent the entire country."

The president and Letterman also chatted about lighter topics, with Obama joking about the Florida pizza restaurant owner who lifted him off the ground in a bear hug last week. `'I think he fixed something in my back," Obama said.

The two also exchanged compliments on their appearances:

"You look good," Obama said.

"You haven't seen me naked," Letterman said.

Obama replied: "We're going to keep it that way."

Mitt Romney’s leaked comments, recorded by a hidden camera at a closed-door fundraiser, that 47 percent of Americans “believe that they are victims” and prefer President Obama because his politics are “attractive to people who are not paying taxes” quickly lit up the blogosphere Monday (Our own Karoli posted the leaked video here), so quickly, in fact, that Romney held an impromptu press conference at 10:30 p.m. to address them. In his brief remarks, he doesn’t disavow the argument, instead saying it was “not elegantly stated” and “spoken off the cuff.” He also said that comments were in line with his campaign strategy to “focus on the people in the middle.” Apparently he's referring to the people in the middle of the top one percent along with him, because his remarks in that leaked video were a giant "F-U" to the rest of Americans. But in case any of Romney's internet team is reading, I pay my taxes every year. However, we still don't know if Mitt Romney pays his.

And as it turns out, the source of the leaked Romney video is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. James Carter IV is credited as a research assistant on the Mother Jones piece that broke the story. Carter spends time “almost every day” searching for video clips of Republicans.

From Press TV: This episode of the show reports on the Anaheim solidarity marches across the U.S., Frack attack rallies in D.C., Stand Up Chicago and raise the minimum wage rallies, the Obama fundraiser in Portland as well as the AIDS awareness rallies.

This episode also interviews many Occupy Wall Street protesters including the “Stand Up Chicago” policy analyst Elizabeth Parisian.

Via Moveon.org: Rob of Team Romneymobile tracked "Tricky Mitt" Romney to yet another high dollar fundraiser in Pittsburgh, PA. Find out why folks are calling Romney, "Tricky Mitt".

On Sunday, July 8th, over 200 protestors crashed the Koch Brothers' $50,000 a ticket fundraising party for their candidate, Mitt Romney. Since the Kochs are giving over a billion dollars to buy Mitt Romney the presidency, should we be worried about who Romney would represent if he takes office? Hmmmmmm.

This action was a collaboration between MoveOn.org, Occupy Huntington, Occupy the Hamptons, Occupy Wall Street, the Long Island Progressive Coalition, United NY, the Strong Economy for All Coalition, and Art Not War.com.....thanks to all 200 activists who braved the hot sun!